MUMBAI: It’s been close to a month since the ouster of Cyrus Mistry from Tata Sons blew up into one of the biggest corporate battles in India’s history. Allegations and counter-allegations have been flowing thick and fast since — and there is no sign of a let up in the turf war.

ET caught up with professors at business schools and leadership experts to find out what were the main management or workplace lessons that the Tata-Mistry saga has thrown up. Here are some key takeaways:

Succession Planning This is one of the key responsibilities of top leadership, and they owe it to all the stakeholders to plan a smooth succession, says Lata Dhir, professor of organisational behaviour, leadership and HR management at SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR).

Succession in any large conglomerate is a complex affair and is a decision made on multiple factors, which may be paradoxical, says Dhir.

For instance, the successor may be required to have a proven business focus while at the same time have sensitivity to legacy-related cultural issues. “This process has to be given the required time and attention much before the actual eventuality arises,” says Dhir.

Mistry was first a member of the committee that was formed to find a successor to Ratan Tata, but then became a candidate himself, which, she pointed out, made some to question the entire process.

“This also drives home how difficult it is to select a strong candidate for such a large and reputed organisation as the Tatas.”

Quality of Governance How quality of governance is influenced by the values of board members and key stake holders, and how power and politics can corrupt this.

Given that the board is the custodian of various stakeholder interests, it is critical that the directors are equipped with not just techno-managerial capabilities, but also the right blend of values, says Kavil Ramachandran, executive director of Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise at Indian School of Business.

“It is normal to have differences in terms of views and judgments, but the members should be able to see everything keeping their custodianship role in mind. Otherwise power and politics will replace values as the driving force,” he cautions.The Trade-Off The trade-off between values and professional approach. This, says Rajiv Agarwal, associate professor of family business, strategy and entrepreneurship at SPJIMR, is a key consideration for newly appointed professionals or family members employed in companies.

“The question of whether the family will change their traditional outlook or will the company have to change to adhere to the values of the family, is the question every successor CEO has to evaluate,” says Agarwal.

He cited an example of non-vegetarian food used in the institute’s family business programme.

Kumar Mangalam Birla wrote in the McKinsey quarterly: “If we wanted to make our mark on the world, we had to be prepared for the world to leave its mark on us”, and the Birla group allowed nonvegetarian food to be served at Birla cafeterias in Thailand and India, including at Birla House. On the other hand, Reliance Retail stopped selling Delite non-veg frozen foods in deference to requests from some stakeholders.“It is not a case of which value is right or wrong, but more an issue of, what are the values which are sacrosanct and non-negotiable in our family and which values we can consider changing,” says Agarwal.

The challenge, he says, which a newcomer has to face is to understand what are the values that a family and hence a family business stands for, and to what extent can these be tested, tweaked, modified or ignored. “With over 80% of the Indian businesses family-owned, -managed or -controlled, this becomes a lesson too important to ignore,” he says.

Trust is Key“A good workplace should create an environment with mutual trust and confidence among all stakeholders. If such an environment is not created, corporate governance will get impacted,” says Veeresh Sharma, chairperson, strategic management area, Management Development Institute-Gurgaon.

From the management standpoint, he adds, the person selected to lead the organisation should be given a free hand to operate. “Any interference can result in conflicts,” he cautions.

Learning AgilityThe need for learning agility among leaders. The post-2008/2009 VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world, says leadership adviser and executive coach Smita Anand, requires leaders who can deal with both deep expertise and ambiguity to create market-leading strategies, and most of all, grow revenue and profit through managing the conflicted, demanding and disparate set of internal and external stakeholders.

Says Anand: “I believe it starts with leaders rolling up their sleeves, be ready to be vulnerable and say ‘I don’t know the answer. I see the need for me to forget some & know some more. For creating shareholder value, I will create line of sight (if not collaboration) amongst seemingly unconnected businesses and create focus as well as connectedness rather than polarisation. And this journey will start with me leading the appropriate charge on changing myself to then set the tone of the culture of speed & change — whether I be Tata or Mistry.’”

Clarity of ProcessesISB’s Ramachandran stresses on the importance of building checks and balances while implementing a strategy.

“Sometimes, the process of decision-making is not specified, and is driven by unwritten assumptions. This can be tricky. Even at the senior management and higher levels, people may tend to push with their personal preferences and prejudices.”

Personal egos can cause permanent damage to organisations, he says. “Everyone has an ego but the question is the extent to which it can override objectivity in taking decisions. Professionalism assumes objective decision-making.”